Elizabeth Allenís Aquamarine (2006) is very simply
a safe fantasy tale about young ladies, the young boys they are interested in
and the title character, a mermaid who surfaces in the latter part of the
summer.† I guess this is so the season
ends more memorably and the kids are more easily distracted by the fact they
will have to soon drag themselves back to school.

The film is predictable and formulaic without any shame
whatsoever, but Fox decided to greenlight the project and wing it to see where
it goes.† It was unsurprisingly a dud at
the box office, but in the long term, it could become some kind of minor
favorite like the simpler novels marketed to young pre-teens by the publishing
industry.† Outside of young girls and
their gay male counterparts, there is nothing to see here otherwise.

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is better than
the 1.33 X 1 flipside, with detail and color improvements, though
cinematographer Brian Breheny, A.C.S., has done this odd thing with the image
of slightly overexposing it to make it look a tad sunnier, though color and
definition are affected.† It is a shrewd
move for such a commercial film, but if this catches on in the long run on DVD
and Blu-ray, he will be responsible in part just by having made it look just
that different form other films.† The
Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on the widescreen side is more accurate and less
butchered than the pan & scan side and is passable, if not spectacular.† Extras include an odd intro by Allen,
deleted scenes, a couple of commentary (one only scene-specific) tracks,
deleted scenes and three featurettes.